In this tutorial, we'll take a look at Illustrator from a beginner's perspective. Before we go too far though, be sure to read up on another post I wrote called Illustrator vs Photoshop if you haven't already done so. It'll give you a primer in the key differences between these two graphics powerhouses.

As soon as you launch Illustrator, you'll be met with the Welcome Screen. The Welcome Screen is a great place to get started, as it'll enable you to open files that you recently had open, create new print, web, or video files, and also access a few extra resources. Let's go ahead and get started.

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In the New Document dialog box, go ahead and set up your file as you'd like. This is usually the first thing that you want to do in Illustrator before you get tearing into your project. When you're ready, go ahead and click OK.

Now that we have a new, blank file ready to go in Illustrator, we can get familiar with some of the fundamentals. Let's get started by taking a look at a few basic shape tools and how to apply some color.

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Go ahead and choose any shape tool you'd like. I think I'll go with the Star tool -- creating stars is pretty cool in Illustrator. Before we go any further, do me a favor and hit the "D" key on your keyboard (just "D" all by itself). This ensures that you'll be drawing with the default fill and stroke colors.

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First, as you're dragging your shape, try holding down Shift. If you're drawing a rectangle or an ellipse, your shape will snap to a 'perfect' shape (either a perfect square or a perfect circle). If you're drawing a polygon or a star, your shape will snap to be drawn perfectly straight. Next, try holding down Opt (Mac) or Alt (PC). This has no effect if you're drawing polygons or stars, but if it's ellipses or rectangles you're drawing, you'll now be creating your shape from the centre rather than from a corner. Cool!

Okay, my favorite technique. This applies to polygons and stars. As you're dragging, try tapping your up and down arrow keys. Your arrow keys will add or subtract sides (in the case of polygons) or points (if you're creating a star). Awesome!

حسنا ، الآن بعد أن قمنا بإنشاء الشكل ، دعونا ملء مع بعض الألوان.

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Finally, let's head to the Swatches panel on the right and choose a color. You may have to choose Window > Swatches if it's not visible onscreen. Choose whichever color you'd like -- your shape will be completely filled with it.

Want to change the outline color? No problem. Illustrator calls a shape's outline the stroke...

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Choose Window > Appearance to open Illustrator's Appearance panel. The Appearance panel is where a lot of the fun happens. Let's take a look. First, notice how it displays your fill and stroke. Try clicking on the stroke; now you can increase the stroke weight. Easy.

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In the Pucker & Bloat dialog box, turn on Preview and try dragging the slider to the left and right. Pretty sweet, huh? Fiddle around for a bit, then click OK when you're happy with the result. Notice that Pucker & Bloat gets added to the Appearance panel.

What's amazing is that this effect is non-destructive. In other words, we can come back to this file later on, and adjust our Pucker & Bloat, or remove it altogether, and we'd still have our original shape intact. Let's try something else. Traditionally, shapes in Illustrator could only have one stroke and one fill. This all changed a few versions back, and now what we can do is put multiple fills and multiple strokes onto a single vector object.

Geoff Blake is a book author, video presenter, designer, and visual artist. As an in demand live-on-stage software educator since 1997, Geoff has taught desktop publishing, web design and graphics courses all over North America and is regarded as an expert in Adobe's Creative Suite applications, as well as in HTML, CSS, WordPress, and related technologies.
With his humorous, non-jargonny approach, Geoff produces highly regarded articles, video training and DVDs, and regularly contributes to top industry magazines and websites.

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